DevOps Who??
Where did DevOps even come from?
Originally, software development had a cycle called the Waterfall cycle. Where various parts of the software process were documented, agreed upon, and coded within phases.
This process is pretty straightforward, however, many departments were not in communication with each other and only focused on their tasks and sections. Once a phase was completed, the next one could begin. Because of this, it was hard to go back and make changes or notice when any bugs started to arise.
Then, What is DevOps?
DevOps is what came from learning the issues of the Waterfall process. After combining various practices of Software Development and IT operations, we ended up with something cool. Thus, DevOps was born.
“DevOps can be best explained as people working together to conceive, build and deliver secure software at top speed .” — GitLab
DevOps teams (development, testing, and operations) are cross-functional, and they work together through the software development cycle, which means everyone is in contact with each other. The cycle starts at the planning stage, which is where the tools, resources, and roadmap for services are created. Once everything is good to go there, it moves to the coding phase where the development of products based on the roadmap is created with various code blocks. Then it is built and tested. They create a huge repository, and they automate testing to find bugs or any other issues. Then the REAL testing begins. When it’s in the test stage, it's tested in various environments to test for performance, security, and framework.
Once it’s ready, it will deploy and users will have full access to the product, where data will be collected in the operation stage, where data is collected and monitored for the next cycle.
Because of this, the product gets out faster to you and is updated quicker!
Ok, but who even uses DevOps?
One of your (possibly) favorite go-to stores uses it, Target.
Target felt they had originally lacked a “dynamic engineering culture.” They felt they were facing issues within their technology that they needed to make a change to, as they were experiencing a lack of reusable solutions. They had so many projects that they were making little progress on and if they could finish or deliver them, they would rely on third parties, which resulted in a loss of their intellectual property.
Target also felt that their IT sector was difficult to work in since their engineers were working in silos and were not optimized to their best capabilities.
Ok.. but how do they use it?
To fix their problem, they started to bring in people from various parts of the company with the best and perfect skill sets for a round table that lasted 3–5 days. They called these Flashbuilds, which later became the 30-Day Challenge, and these were their solutions to silo issues. However, the problem with these was that they solved a small problem in a couple of days and didn’t promote learning in a short period. When Flashbuilds became the 30-day challenge, they realized that individuals would go back to their old teams who did not do learning, and the old way of working started up again.
These Flashbuilds became what they now call The Dojo Challenge, where they brought whole teams together to brainstorm with each other to create new ways of delivering a product. At Target Dojo, they have many teams, including Scrum Masters, Engineers, and various other teams, to do training with a goal in mind, but this is not the main challenge they face. After creating and implementing The Dojo, they have now completed 300+ challenges and plan to continue to grow, as they feel the “journey is never done.”
The DevOps movement at Target is the intersection of the three (Collaboration, Empathy, and Experimental Learning) values so we witness seamless delivery of product. — Target
Ah, that makes a lot of sense.. so is DevOps here to stay?
Of course, it is! In Technology, things are changing rapidly. DevOps is one of the things that helps keeps things changing and growing at a steady pace, so the things you need in your applications are to you as quickly as possible. The culture of Software Development is changing as we know it.
